A Married Man by Piers Paul Read is one of The 1,000 Novels Everyone Must Read, although it is only 5577th on The Greatest Books of All Time; it used to be in my Top 200, now, after reading it for the second time, I don’t know, but maybe I have a conclusion by the time I finish this note…you may have some suggestions if you visit https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2026/08/do-you-have-any-suggestions-how-to-make.html


A Married Man by Piers Paul Read is one of The 1,000 Novels Everyone Must Read, although it is only 5577th on The Greatest Books of All Time; it used to be in my Top 200, now, after reading it for the second time, I don’t know, but maybe I have a conclusion by the time I finish this note…you may have some suggestions if you visit https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2026/08/do-you-have-any-suggestions-how-to-make.html

 

9 out of 10

 

Piers Paul Read https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/09/a-married-man-by-piers-paul-read-is-as.html mesmerized me, when I first met A Married Man, only now it is a second encounter, and I have had some objections, if minor, while the first time I placed in the headline of my note ‘as close to perfection as possible’

 

Barrister John Strickland is probably more distant from yours truly, and that may be part of the ‘problem’ – though let me conclude from here that the oeuvre is excellent, even if the maximum expectations have not been met, it is not perfect, just like I said the first time – for I was younger when I sympathized, identified with the hero

Now, he may be too young to enter his world, and imagine that I live his life…John Strickland is Married – he is in the title – with Clare, but the honeymoon effect, midlife crisis, some other factors contribute to a lowering of the temperature between them https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/02/the-death-of-ivan-ilych-by-leo-tolstoy.html

 

The Married Man reads The Death of Ivan Ilych and this has a serious impact, he is terrified by death, feels the urge to ‘do something’, he flirts with Jill, a girl above the age of consent, but only seventeen years old, the teenager has lunch with him, and then mocks his letter in front of her friends, and the protagonist finds out

Early on, he had the case of a mechanic, Tery, who had been accused of handling stolen goods, and due to negligence, the client is sent to prison, where Paula Gerrard tries to help him, she does social work for inmates, and persuades John Strickland to take Tery as client again, seeing as he had been responsible for the first sentence

 

Paula Gerrard may be worth close to a billion today, she has a very wealthy father, and she starts an affair with the barrister – maybe it was time for a spoiler alert higher up, except I do not see how, and why people bother to come so far, probably they don’t – this is where I had some misgivings, due to Hedonic Adaptation?

Stumbling on Happiness https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2026/02/stumbling-on-happiness-by-david-gilbert.html is a phenomenal oeuvre, which explains how we think a move, different outcomes would make us so happy, we think, only when we get there, we find we are not ecstatic…maybe what happened here

 

Paula is not so attractive, which makes sense in real life, and in a credible novel – Kingsley Amis wrote about Virginia Woolf ‘I don’t believe a word’, or something to that effect, regarding her prose – except I want the personages to be ‘deeper, cleverer, nobler’, and more beautiful…nonetheless, she brings misfortune, tragedy

 

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